Speaker 1: Yielder.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
Speaker 2: daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. A few
Speaker 2: years ago, commentators and analysts often raised the idea of
Speaker 2: a youth quake, young first time voters coming in and
Speaker 2: shaking up the political landscape. It was after things like
Speaker 2: school strikes for climate showed the power of youth mobilizing
Speaker 2: around a common goal. Yet those youth quakes never actually happened,
Speaker 2: at least not for left leaning politicians. Instead, there's been
Speaker 2: a shift to more conservative views amongst our youngest voters,
Speaker 2: and a yearning for the quote good old days has
Speaker 2: seen trends like tradwives and a return to traditional values
Speaker 2: skyrocket online. It's all while a recent UK survey found
Speaker 2: that fifty two percent of thirteen to twenty seven year
Speaker 2: olds believe their country would be better with a strong
Speaker 2: leader who does not have to bother with Parliament and elections. Today,
Speaker 2: on the Front Page to discuss what's shaping the youth
Speaker 2: of today, we're joined by aut senior lecturer and Communication
Speaker 2: studies Christina Vogels. Christina, I'm just going to throw some
Speaker 2: stats your way. Recent polling done for Channel four in
Speaker 2: the UK has found fifty two percent of gen Z
Speaker 2: believe the UK would be better if the leader did
Speaker 2: not bother with parliament and elections, forty seven percent believed
Speaker 2: the way society is organized must be radically changed through revolution,
Speaker 2: and a third believed the country would be better with
Speaker 2: the army in charge now. According to a Harvard Youth
Speaker 2: poll as well, the US's youngest voters, those aged eighteen
Speaker 2: to twenty four, say that they're more conservative than the cohort.
Speaker 2: That's just a bit older, so millennials, and that's a
Speaker 2: new trend towards young men more likely to be conservative
Speaker 2: than liberal. Now, do these numbers surprise you at all,
Speaker 2: because when I think of the words you'd typically use
Speaker 2: with gen Z, pro authoritarian, I don't think is one
Speaker 2: of them.
Speaker 3: I'm not surprised, but I am alarmed. I must admit
Speaker 3: I'm not surprised because there has been this shift to
Speaker 3: a more far right ideology through the Western world. And
Speaker 3: you know, people are talking about America being this post
Speaker 3: democratic state at the moment, So we are seeing a
Speaker 3: very very quick shift to this far right. And it
Speaker 3: is concerning that our young people, and I mean gen Z,
Speaker 3: I suppose they were born from nineteen ninety seven to
Speaker 3: twenty twelve. So you know, what we're seeing is a
Speaker 3: lot of young men in their early twenties taking on
Speaker 3: these more kind of conservative views. The issue is that
Speaker 3: we've got these teenagers coming up behind them who are
Speaker 3: trying to make sense of what it's going to be
Speaker 3: like to be an adult for then those are the
Speaker 3: ones that we need to really look at in terms
Speaker 3: of why they are feeling this way.
Speaker 2: What do you think is shaping these views in youth?
Speaker 2: Is this kind of radicalization happening online? Do you think.
Speaker 3: I've done some work on young women and this growing
Speaker 3: trend towards the conservative and the far right, and it
Speaker 3: matches what's happening with young men. So if we look
Speaker 3: at young men in the rise of you know, Jordan
Speaker 3: Peterson and these social media influencers who are promoting this
Speaker 3: return to some kind of quote unquote real masculinity. By
Speaker 3: the way, this is not a new thing. This happens
Speaker 3: in waves across history. So we last had a men's
Speaker 3: liberation movement in the nineteen eighties where it was really
Speaker 3: popular this idea of returning to a conservative masculinity identity.
Speaker 3: What we are seeing at the moment is also it
Speaker 3: been complemented by a rise in young women taking on
Speaker 3: conservative gender roles, and we see this particularly through the
Speaker 3: traad wife movement, which dovetails Worth, the far right woman's movement,
Speaker 3: and simply this is a return to this ultra state
Speaker 3: of femininity which is completely subservient to men, as well
Speaker 3: as promoting white male privilege. It's an alarming trend at
Speaker 3: the moment.
Speaker 1: I can't tell you how deeply I detest the idea
Speaker 1: that our culture is an oppressive patriarchy, that's the best
Speaker 1: way to conceptualize it, and that the appropriate way to
Speaker 1: view history is the domination, the endless domination of women
Speaker 1: by men over the course of the last several thousands
Speaker 1: of years, and that any attempt by young men to
Speaker 1: manifest any ambition or competence is equivalent to power, and
Speaker 1: all they're doing is taking their place in the pathle
Speaker 1: logical culture. All of that, to me is it's one
Speaker 1: sided to start with, but I think it's appalling beyond description.
Speaker 2: Well, that Channel four survey I mentioned before, it's also
Speaker 2: found that forty five percent of male respondents agreed with
Speaker 2: the idea that we have gone too far or so
Speaker 2: far in promoting women's equality that we're actually discriminating against men.
Speaker 2: They listed the likes of Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson
Speaker 2: as trusted figures. Now, you mentioned the term trad wife,
Speaker 2: and that's been trending since about twenty twenty. Hey, that's
Speaker 2: a traditional wife who stays at home while the man
Speaker 2: goes to work. You see them online making bread from
Speaker 2: scratch and doting over their kids. I mean, what's going
Speaker 2: on here, Christina? Why are we seeing this traditional lifestyle
Speaker 2: coming back?
Speaker 3: Do you think? I think there are a range of reasons,
Speaker 3: but I keep on coming back to this idea of
Speaker 3: onto life logical security. A very famous sociologist called Anthony
Speaker 3: Giddons first coined this term a few decades ago, and
Speaker 3: what he said was that when time is uncertain, when
Speaker 3: life seems to be confusing or problematic, like it is today,
Speaker 3: we think about all the things that people are trying
Speaker 3: to deal with globally. You know, we've got climate emergency,
Speaker 3: we've got a post democratic Trump America, we've got the
Speaker 3: digital world, which seems to be almost going into a
Speaker 3: post digital world with artificial intelligence. People are feeling a
Speaker 3: great sense of unease, which means that they want to
Speaker 3: return to an ontological security, which is a fancy word
Speaker 3: for a stable identity. We see this with people entering cults.
Speaker 3: I recently listened to a podcast about why cults are
Speaker 3: so desirable to people, and they use this term again
Speaker 3: about ontological security, having a secure base or identity. I
Speaker 3: think for young men, who particularly are in that white
Speaker 3: male grouping, life seems quite uncertain.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Scholars talk about the crisis of white masculinity because of
Speaker 3: the rise of things like Civil Rights movement, Black Lives Matter,
Speaker 3: Meet two campaigns, you know. So white men are feeling
Speaker 3: like their identity is in crisis. So they want to
Speaker 3: return to a stable identity. And there is nothing more stable,
Speaker 3: really than this idea of again this quote unquote real masculinity.
Speaker 3: And we're seeing it with a young woman. Now. Young
Speaker 3: woman also are feeling the effects of a very uncertain world.
Speaker 3: And so I wonder if part of this return to
Speaker 3: a tread wife identity or the promotion of trad wife
Speaker 3: lifestyles is going back to this idea of a simple
Speaker 3: life you talked about, you know, the idea of baking
Speaker 3: bread and mend and clothes and tending to children. This
Speaker 3: is a very confined and simple identity for women to hold,
Speaker 3: and in a way I can see why it makes sense.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm a single mum, I work full time.
Speaker 3: On any given day, my identity changes, my sense of
Speaker 3: selfhood changes, and you know, we talk about this idea
Speaker 3: of the juggle of motherhood in the modern world. So
Speaker 3: I think what's happening for tradwives is that people that
Speaker 3: are supporting them online is this kind of nostalgic sense
Speaker 3: of simplicity. The problem is is when it dovetails with
Speaker 3: this complete subservience to men and this giving over of
Speaker 3: things like decision making, financial security, or a right to
Speaker 3: choose what to do with one's life. And this is
Speaker 3: what we're seeing with so many tradwives as well, and
Speaker 3: they are almost promoting a joy of doing this, of
Speaker 3: giving over their lives to their husbands, which is so worrying.
Speaker 2: I guess going back or we bet here, but hippies
Speaker 2: in the free love movement they were born as a
Speaker 2: response to that post war conservatism. Is what's happening here
Speaker 2: in any way, a response I suppose to Gen X
Speaker 2: and millennials becoming more liberal over the last twenty five
Speaker 2: to thirty years. I'm thinking that things like the Black
Speaker 2: Lives Matter, Me Too, etc. Has the pendulum swung?
Speaker 3: That is a good question, and I think the pendulum
Speaker 3: always swings. That's the first thing. You know, we cannot
Speaker 3: just say that life was better one hundred years ago
Speaker 3: for women. It comes in waves. So we can see
Speaker 3: through history. Even if we go back to the late
Speaker 3: eighteen hundreds, with the first wave of the woman's movement,
Speaker 3: we saw this time of great promotion of women's rights,
Speaker 3: but then it became silenced. As we went through into
Speaker 3: the nineteen twenties and thirties, and the nineteen forties and fifties,
Speaker 3: obviously women's rights were not particularly promoted, and then we
Speaker 3: had the sixties and seventies when we get this wave
Speaker 3: again into this idea of women's rights. You know, this
Speaker 3: pendulum is always swinging. I think what's happening today, and
Speaker 3: if we look even five years ago at me too,
Speaker 3: we seem to be in a completely different world. I mean,
Speaker 3: you've got COVID, the post COVID world, which is still
Speaker 3: having an effect. But also you've got far right politics
Speaker 3: which have now become incredibly mainstream, which is allowing this
Speaker 3: kind of ground swell of ultra conservative ideas and talk
Speaker 3: to be more mainstream and social media. So it's always
Speaker 3: been there, it's just we've got this fertile ground, if
Speaker 3: you like, for people with these conservative views to promote
Speaker 3: them online.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is the generation, the generation that we're
Speaker 2: speaking about that a few years ago Ditch School went
Speaker 2: on strikes for climate every other week, it seemed. Is
Speaker 2: it still that generation or just not hearing from that
Speaker 2: side more?
Speaker 3: I wonder if having this blanket term of gen Z
Speaker 3: is almost making it to generalist as well. I mean
Speaker 3: I see a shift in the different age groups that
Speaker 3: went through COVID for example. You know, at the moment
Speaker 3: we've got a whole group of young gen zs who
Speaker 3: had a lot of their schooling interrupted by COVID, a
Speaker 3: lot more digital use, and then we come in with
Speaker 3: that with this far right mainstream idea of life. It
Speaker 3: would be really interesting as a research project to actually
Speaker 3: look at a couple of samples within that generation to
Speaker 3: actually see where they are standing at the moment. I mean,
Speaker 3: what we see with social media at the moment as
Speaker 3: definitely young men and women in their very very late
Speaker 3: teens or early twenties going into that period of adulthood
Speaker 3: who are supporting these conservative views. I think where our
Speaker 3: focus needs to be is now to talk to our
Speaker 3: even younger people a young men and women who are
Speaker 3: in high school, and to actually see what they are
Speaker 3: thinking about this, so that we can actually get them
Speaker 3: to talk as well. The thing about research is that
Speaker 3: it often doesn't privilege children's and young people's voices. It
Speaker 3: tends to be more adult centric. So we need to
Speaker 3: be going into the classrooms and talking to our young people.
Speaker 2: When it comes to tradwives, can you be a trad
Speaker 2: wife but also enjoy everything that the women's movement has
Speaker 2: done for you? I suppose. I mean back in the fifties,
Speaker 2: you know, women couldn't have their own bank accounts, They
Speaker 2: couldn't have access to their own money, and that was
Speaker 2: their role. Now, though, is there an opportunity to I suppose,
Speaker 2: be a tradwife, look after your man, look after the house,
Speaker 2: but also be afforded those luxuries I suppose that the
Speaker 2: women of the fifties didn't have.
Speaker 3: This is where it gets so incredibly fascinating. So one
Speaker 3: of the tradwives that I follow online is Aria Lewis
Speaker 3: now she is an ultra trad wife. She promotes that
Speaker 3: she is completely subservient to her husband and he gives
Speaker 3: her an allowance every single week. She even posts kind
Speaker 3: of celebrating when her allowance comes in and what she's
Speaker 3: been spending on it. The contradiction is that she herself
Speaker 3: is turning herself into an amazing business woman with great
Speaker 3: kind of marketing potential as well. She's got her own
Speaker 3: merchandise line, and so we're seeing all of these different
Speaker 3: ways of being a woman that you're absolutely right. In
Speaker 3: the nineteen fifties, a woman would not able to have
Speaker 3: kind of been this trad wife as well as have
Speaker 3: an industry behind her. But now what we see with
Speaker 3: social media is that women are able to do this.
Speaker 3: My question is what actually happens to Aria's finances and
Speaker 3: they must all go to her husband, I presume. So
Speaker 3: again we have a business woman who is afforded that
Speaker 3: because of feminism, but then returning to this pre feminist
Speaker 3: or pre second wave of feminism way of running household.
Speaker 4: The people with the most opinions on what it means
Speaker 4: to be a tradwife are not the people in the
Speaker 4: track community, but actually people who are completely opposite and
Speaker 4: against what tradwives believe and stand for. They have this limited,
Speaker 4: oppressed view of what it means to be tracked, and
Speaker 4: they try to put us in this box.
Speaker 3: When we break they're made up stereotypes.
Speaker 4: They say, oh, you honor tidwife, as if they get
Speaker 4: to define who we are.
Speaker 3: I have never had another.
Speaker 4: Tradwife say that I'm not tried because I.
Speaker 3: Have a side hustle.
Speaker 4: But I have had many outside the community tell me
Speaker 4: that being traditional is not a nineteen fifties cosplay cult
Speaker 4: or a little House on the Prairie cosplay cult. Being
Speaker 4: traditional is having a set of values that you make
Speaker 4: your life decisions from.
Speaker 3: We all do this. It's called having a worldview.
Speaker 2: You mentioned before that this is cyclical. Do you think
Speaker 2: in ten years time that tradwives and all this will
Speaker 2: just be seen as a trend I suppose, or do
Speaker 2: you think these views could be here to stay.
Speaker 3: I am hopeful that we will come out of this.
Speaker 3: I say that because history tells us that the only
Speaker 3: thing that is a concern is what's happening with the
Speaker 3: far right movement. Because what we're seeing in America is
Speaker 3: a new state of political play, This post democratic America
Speaker 3: is something that we haven't seen before in the Western
Speaker 3: world in this space, So that in itself is concerning.
Speaker 3: So to be able to predict if this wave is
Speaker 3: going to, you know, obviously go down and then we
Speaker 3: will return to a much more liberal gendered space, I'm
Speaker 3: not sure, but history tells us that we have to
Speaker 3: come out of this, that we have to then have
Speaker 3: the next wave of how we make sense of masculinity
Speaker 3: and femininity and.
Speaker 2: How should we go about educating our kids on these
Speaker 2: kind of gender roles, the masculine the feminine. Can we
Speaker 2: find a way to do that without I suppose ostracizing
Speaker 2: one gender or the other.
Speaker 3: I think there are two things there. One it is
Speaker 3: around having conversations about social media and what people are
Speaker 3: seeing on social media. Social media, obviously, in terms of
Speaker 3: the trade wife movement has been huge. I mean, some
Speaker 3: of these trad wives have got millions and millions of followers, right,
Speaker 3: and as we know, what is portrayed on social media
Speaker 3: is the idyllic narrative. Right, So, how do we make
Speaker 3: young people and I'm talking about school age young people
Speaker 3: incredibly literate and critically literate in how they view these
Speaker 3: influences okay. I think the other thing is having conversations
Speaker 3: with our young people, so school aged children as well,
Speaker 3: because like I said before, we don't often have the
Speaker 3: opportunity to talk with them, and so researchers really need
Speaker 3: to be having that focus on talking with young people
Speaker 3: about this. I think it's about getting a sense of
Speaker 3: what they're thinking at the moment, instead of as adults
Speaker 3: trying to create each location programs to put into schools
Speaker 3: without doing that groundwork. You know, what are our young
Speaker 3: people thinking. I think that's the key.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us, Christina.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2: That's it for this episode of The Front Page. You
Speaker 2: can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
Speaker 2: at enzdherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page is
Speaker 2: produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also
Speaker 2: our sound engineer. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front
Speaker 2: Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and
Speaker 2: tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.